Rival
by chinesefirethorn
Summary: Kakashi wished the man had just worn those damn legwarmers. GaiKakashi friendship and maybe a hint of more. (Set years after the 3rd Shinobi War, Gai's first solo mission, early 20s)


**Rival**

_Set years after the 3rd Shinobi War, Gai's first solo mission, early 20s_

* * *

"Just you wait! When I come back from my mission, Rival, I will be five times stronger than I am- NO! Ten times stronger!" Gai pointed a finger at him, dark eyes unflinchingly filled with his characteristic passion and a depth leftover from the war. His chest was puffed out for emphasis. "So you'd better be prepared!"

Kakashi spared the man a glance over the rim of Jiraiya-sama's pioneer title.

They were both just beginning to fill out their vests, finally growing tall enough and broad enough for the standard issue wear to fit snugly around their shoulders. But he had to admit, seeing Gai properly dressed in full jounin uniform was odder than his trademark jumpsuit and legwarmers. It sent an ominous feeling like bad miso ramen in his belly.

Only his bowlcut, bandages and the scarf around his neck resembled the overly enthusiastic boy who'd sharpened his below average skills against the jeers and the failed exams, the biting prejudice against his unusual looks, and his initial one-sided rivalry with Kakashi - and turned them into powerful attacks that made him a valuable asset to any team.

Except, he didn't have a team with him now.

It was Gai's first solo mission as a jounin- originally a B-rank item delivery turned A-rank with the limited completion time and potential enemy nin he'd encounter. As one of the fastest shinobi in the village with the most stamina, Sandaime had personally chosen him as the perfect candidate to take the brief stop from Konoha to Tanzaku Gai, and the long run on to the borders of Hi no Kuni and back. Gai had rushed over to his apartment that day, practically gushing at his new assignment.

And now Gai was _beaming _at him like he was supposed to say something about both of them wearing the same clothes, the same rank and the one word he knew Gai wanted to hear; had been pushing and pushing himself harder and harder in the hopes that Kakashi would one day call him-

"Mah, see you then." Kakashi replied, looking back down at his book.

"KAHHH! Too cool!" Gai griped and clenched his fists, stomping one foot on the ground in front of him. The backpack filled with four days' rations shifted on his back, looking like it would spill over at any moment with the odd lumps and sharp edges protruding through the top. "Why can't you just wish me well and tell me you'll be waiting for me, like a good friend would?!"

"I wish you well. I'll be waiting for you," Kakashi said without a shift in tone, and turned a page.

"You will change your hip attitude when I come back bursting with Youth!" Gai cried, holding a hand against his chest dramatically before he was tearing out the gate in a blur of blue and red that was utterly, completely _wrong _when there should have been a speck of green and orange.

Kakashi wished the man had just worn those damn legwarmers.

When an hour had passed, he stood up from the bench he was sitting on and tucked his new book under his arm. The cool breeze he'd been enjoying was gone now, giving him no further reason to have similarly coincidental encounters like Gai leaving Konoha.

The first day Gai wasn't there to greet him a glorious good morning, half an hour after Kakashi visited the memorial stone like clockwork, the silver-haired man didn't even look up from page thirty-three of Icha Icha Paradise. The riveting tale had him hooked from the prologue and he hadn't been able to put it down ever since. It was a welcome distraction from the names he'd traced earlier with his calloused fingers, left eye aching and his hitai-ate damp with tears.

The second day Gai didn't show up at his doorstep loudly proclaiming that, _My Eternal Rival, I have the perfect challenge to prove our manliness and worth!_, Kakashi paused as he stepped out of his apartment and caught himself before he could let his gaze linger on Gai's bright green door beside him. On his other side, Genma had just finished setting up the last of his traps outside his own apartment.

"It's pretty quiet around here without Gai," Genma commented offhandedly, switching the senbon from one side of his mouth to the other. "The eyebrows and skin-tight spandex kinda grows on you, doesn't it?"

The casual topic had Kakashi's visible eye sliding towards him. "I hadn't noticed." He shrugged, unwilling to play along with Genma's ill-concealed prodding. He'd been doing that ever since Gai publicly announced he and Kakashi were fated to be Eternal Rivals, and trumped even Obito's incessant attempts a lifetime ago.

The other man tucked a stray strand of hair under his bandana. "You always pretended not to hear him shouting out your name. I guess you'll have a few days of peace while _Gai-kun_'s away. Plus, he's going to have more dangerous missions now that he's a jounin."

Kakashi's lips pressed against each other under the mask, trapping the fabric between them as his eye grew lidded and lazy. "Mm, it looks that way. Why the sudden interest? Were you that surprised that he passed the exam?"

"Of course not. His goal was always you-" Genma said, "To be like you. I'm not surprised he made it this far."

Kakashi didn't need to see his face to know the other man was smiling, the silver-haired jounin just shoving his hands in his pockets as he stepped past him. "Neither am I."

The third day Gai's already deepening voice wasn't booming out the number of pushups, situps, pullups, kicks, punches, and laps on the training grounds, Kakashi was rapidly realizing that nothing he did could bring the same intense adrenalin-pumping heat of a _real_ challenge, and that most of the training posts were already half-broken by the brutal strength of fists and legs.

The fourth day, Gai hadn't returned, and Kakashi had a faint inkling- just a miniscule consciousness of how much his day actually contained one outspoken green-clad shinobi whom he currently could _not _trick into a ramen-eating contest on Gai's bill.

He knew- he knew it was a bad idea to try conning Ibiki into sparring with him, loser gets the bill for lunch. They'd only traded a few blows, Ibiki speaking in that low voice the whole time, before somehow, Kakashi found himself down on his knees, shaking, his fingers still crackling with dispelled electricity while Rin's blood was on his hands once more and Obito stared up at him with the hole where his eye used to be. And when they'd sat at Ichiraku Ramen's counter, his wallet took just as heavy a beating as his pride.

By the fifth day, Kakashi found himself passing by the double gates of Konoha with its reverse 'n-a' from the inside. It was a nice day for a walk, and the crows that plagued Konoha had taken to sitting contentedly on telephone poles and roofs instead of circling the sky, arsenal filled with potential bombs.

There was still no sign of Gai, but it wasn't like he was watching for his return, scarf trailing after him like a beastly tail and his hands pumped in the air- _Mission complete!_ -alive and whole. His book felt heavy in his hands with one finger marking his place near the end. Turning away from the gate, Kakashi flipped whole chapters back until he was pages away from the start and tucked his finger in the tight valley between the two sides.

He didn't really have any missions on his schedule until next week and couldn't buy a new book with his depleted savings. His various hobbies had taken a serious backseat after he'd joined ANBU. Thinking about it, there wasn't anyone else he could drop in on without reason either.

Asuma had long left Konoha as one of the Twelve Guardian Shinobi. Kurenai was training to refine her genjutsu abilities further with the goal of making it to jounin. Ebisu was hypocritical of his current favorite book, and tended to launch into lectures that Kakashi suspected came from being Gai's former teammate. And Anko...Anko had never fully recovered from her former teacher's betrayal. Sometimes, the look in her eyes was enough to have Kakashi glance the other way, recognizing a darkness in them that he saw in the mirror.

It was sad and pathetic, really, but Kakashi just headed for the Hokage Tower in hopes that there were some C or B-ranked missions that needed fulfilling. Lacking those, he could always visit Raidou just to fuck around with a certain sebon-chewing elite bodyguard.

"Gai. You know, Maito Gai. I heard he was brought in last night." Kakashi's eye was curved but his mask was a smooth plane across his lips.

Around him, medical-nin rushed through the ever busy hallway of Konoha's hospital. There were shinobi waiting in the seats next to the reception desk, with the worst injury being a stabbed leg bleeding through bandages. Normally, shinobi took care of minor injuries on their own. Normally, hospitals meant chakra depletion, a torn limb, broken bones, head wounds, poison, justus that wouldn't dispel even when the caster was hacked into six different pieces.

Normally, patients didn't come in with first and second degree burns from opening all six gateswith a broken rib and enough wounds to make steam rise from their own boiling blood.

The medical-nin on duty was blushing as she quickly looked down at their in-patient list. She hadn't expected to find the cool, enigmatic Kakashi leaning over her first thing in the morning! "Gai..." She cleared her throat as she looked for the name on her list.

"Big man, big voice, bowlcut?" Kakashi added helpfully.

"Oh! That Maito Gai. Yes, he's here in Room 28." Her face darkened a shade. "But I'm sorry Hatake-san, he needs more time to recover before he can have visitors. If you'd like, you can leave a card for him."

Kakashi glanced towards the hallway with it's row of plain white doors. "Hmm, no need. I was just curious." He said, palms rubbing tight against the pads of his gloves. Looking back at the receptionist, his eye curved again. "Thanks for your help."

She was still blushing as he headed out, just realizing after he'd left that, aside from having a cute butt, something orange had been sticking out of his kunai pouch.

For a hospital located inside a hidden village, the wide ledges and shingles that jutted out alongside its windows seemed to encourage patients to sneak out.

Kakashi had always suspected that it was their way of saying, 'Let the other poor sap with a crushed leg and a binding jutsu have his turn if you're well enough to escape.' It was ridiculously easy to slip inside Room 28, where the steady beep of Gai's heart monitor filled in for the man's voice.

"You're late by two days, Gai-kun." Kakashi said as he stepped down from the ledge, not really expecting a reply from the bandage-wrapped form on the bed. He could hear the reassuring hiss of breath through the tube in Gai's mouth, and that was enough. "Maybe you'll start reading Icha Icha Paradise and wear masks next, hm?"

The curtains had been drawn shut right next to the bed, to avoid disrupting Gai's sleep. But Kakashi pulled the edge of it until a patch of sunlight shone on the wall above the unconscious man's head. He knew Gai hated not being able to look out a window with its promise of wide, open spaces and neverending skies.

He really hadn't come here to linger. His rival had stayed in the hospital far too many times for this one to really stand out, with Kakashi just happening to wander into the other man's room when he did. He'd seen Gai with far worse scrapes than this: their chakra levels barely enough to sustain them through the night, deep gashes on Gai's arms, legs, chest and back from fighting at the border of Suna and Konoha; scenes from the war; that vivid memory when Gai first opened five gates all at once and burned brighter than the sun; and the countless missions when Gai pushed himself too hard to protect his friends with his own flesh and bones. Compared to those, this was just routine.

It was just...

That damn look in Gai's eyes when he'd seen Kakashi by the gate, puffing out that chest of his as if to show off how much better he filled the dark blue uniform. It hung off him in scraps now. Some of the tears were visibly made by medic-nin, but there was barely enough fabric to cover Gai's burnt chest and the ugly bruises on his ribs. His scarf was missing and the bandages along Gai's arms were replaced with thick, medical gauze that were damp with salve. Only his forehead protector and thick flak vest were left intact, folded and set neatly on the table beside him.

Kakashi stood next to the bed and reached for his kunai pouch, pulling out the pair of orange legwarmers he'd taken from Gai's apartment that morning. They were worn and slightly frayed at the edges despite the careful stitching woven through it. "You should have stuck with these."

Laying the orange legwarmers on top of Gai's flak jacket, he perched a hand on his hip in satisfaction. "The jounin uniform didn't suit you anyway." He said, turning to leave.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT DIDN'T SUIT ME?"

Kakashi stopped in his tracks and felt a bead of sweat form on his temple. The monitor began shrieking in alarm just as Kakashi felt his heart leap to his throat in surprise. He glanced over his shoulder as Gai proceeded to rip out the leads taped onto his body with a vengeance, having already thrown the breathing tube away. Perfect muscle control- right, the heart was a muscle and Gai was an expert at holding a meditative state. Kakashi was impressed that Gai managed to fool him.

"Of course it suited me! It was just not durable enough to withstand the damage of my powerful techniques, incredible speed and youthful desire to face danger head-on!" Gai was on his feet in a few seconds, giving away just how much he still needed to recover. The remaining scraps of blue fabric fell away from Gai's body, leaving him in just his briefs and the bandages around his burnt skin.

"Durability wasn't the issue. And only a few clothes make it through an ordinary day with you anyway." Kakashi replied, facing the other man again.

Gai's massive brows were animated and drawn together as he stood to his full height. His dark eyes were looking at Kakashi with that incredulous, almost pleading expression he often had around his Rival. "How could you not have noticed how it accentuated my manly physique? It is second only to my superior spandex! It symbolizes my full bloom into shinobi adulthood, and my very first solo mission as a jounin- given to me by Sandaime himself!"

Kakashi, after years of knowing Gai, could see his train of thought heading into tear-inducing territory, where proclamations of finally walking side by side, rank by rank, arm in arm, toe to toe, and justu to justu with his Eternal Rival began. Better to nip it in the bud then. "Which you came home from two days late, burnt and your uniform in tatters."

Ignoring the alarm still ringing from the heart monitor, Gai held up a fist in the air with his whole body radiating determination. "No matter what you say, Rival, it won't take away the fact that I completed the mission to my utmost ability! And despite my unexpected encounter with the enemy, I prevailed over them and proved my worth as a jounin of Konoha! And now that I have returned, I'm eager to show you just how much I've learned from the experiences I had!"

"Mhmm, I take it that's not at all related to you flashing me." Kakashi remarked, looking down at Gai's bright green briefs pointedly. He could hear rushed footsteps heading towards the room, and knew he'd be thrown out one way or another. It was time to leave five minutes ago.

Gai's face flushed at Kakashi's teasing but he refused to be distracted by such an obvious tactic. "Fine! I challenge you to a match at the training grounds below the Hokage Monument!" The door burst open with a medical-nin crying out in frustration when he saw Gai standing up and the equipment going crazy. He was calling for backup, prompting Gai to add quickly, "When I have recovered fully and you can face me at my best."

Kakashi was already lifting the window again, the folds of his mask outlining a smile that reached the curve of his eye. "Ah, I'll be there." He held up a hand and gave a bored wave, calling out before he dropped out of sight, "Welcome back, rival."


End file.
